ROBIN WONG

I was out shooting about at Pudu, a place I have not visited in quite a while. The sky was a little hazy and Kuala Lumpur has been extremely hot lately with no trace of rain for weeks now, hence it was not exactly a fun thing to just walk around drenching your shirt (and possibly all other parts of your cloths) in sweat. Nevertheless, I managed to grab some shots, and hey, that is all that matters and shutter therapy must go on!

All images were taken with Olympus OM-D E-M5 and M.Zuiko 25mm F1.8

It was a mid week that I decided to go to The Bee at Publika, where the Feedback Open Mic session was held, allowing local performing acts to go on stage and showcase their acts. It was entirely open, so I did not quite know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised that a local singer, Ariff AB whom I have been following for quite some time now made an appearance! Not only that, because I popped up more than once in his shows, he started to recognize me and he knew me by name! Sometimes, you just have to be out there, and good things will happen.

Finally I got my hands on Ariff AB's CD Album, titled "Transmission", and I have been looping the tracks for more than a day now. I particularly love his life performance, with powerful vocals and very unique sound that he creates in his music.

Here is a video clip of Black and Blue, which was shabbily recorded. I panicked when the song started and I just pressed the record button without much thought. Should have just went manual focus, instead of C-AF mode in the video!!! Did I ever say I suck at shooting videos?

Oh and check out that amazing 3-Axis Image Stabilization on video, shooting hand-held with 45mm F1.8 lens, not bad eh?

About 7 people turned up for the Night Photography Outing by Olympus Malaysia earlier this evening (just hours ago) and I was glad to lead this group of passionate Olympus shooters along the famous night market at Jalan Masjid India. 

Shooting at the market at night was both fun and challenging at the same time. Fun, because a lot of activities and items sold are unique to the night market, and the atmosphere is rather interesting due to huge congestion of crowd, as well as mixed multiple source of lighting (flourescent, LED, tungsten, etc) all creating a rather different set of photography outcome than shooting during daytime. Challenging, because the place is too crowded, having limited space to move about, and being at night, low light conditions are encountered at times. 

I had great fun being out there with the group of Olympus users, and I sure hope they felt the same way too. I managed to dispense a bit of sharing on some camera techniques, and composition perspectives. Our intention was to get people to shoot more and more with our Olympus gear, and I do hope they have gone home with beautiful images. 

Here are some of my own images, taken during the photowalk session, some were done to demonstrate a few points I was sharing, such as getting shallow depth of field, shooting against bright light, getting close-up and approaching strangers to take their portraits. 

All images were taken with Olympus OM-D E-M5, M.Zuiko lens 45mm F1.8 and Panasonic 14mm F2.5

Yes yes, we all know how superior those full frame cameras are when it comes to low light shooting, producing clean high ISO images. Now the envelope (popularized by Ming Thein) is being pushed further and we are seeing cameras capable of doing impressive ISO numbers, at the moment, as high as 400,000. Steve Huff even posted his teaser image of the Sony A7S image shot at ISO80,000. 

We all want the camera manufacturers to produce better and better products, surely, and we do not want the imaging technology to stay stagnant. We live in an interesting era now, and I am just excited to witness even more amazing stuff coming. 

While everyone is lusting for astronomical high ISO numbers, I am actually very content with what I have, and what my gear can do now. Here is a shot of a cat, who hid away in a narrow gap underneath a table. It was so dark that, even at wide open F1.8 (I was using the 45mm F1.8 lens), I shot the image at ISO12,800 to achieve shutter speed of 1/20 second. The cat moved of course (animals never stayed still) and I fired multiple shots to ensure there were a few that was taken when the cat stopped moving. All images were perfectly in focus (ISO12,800 is considered low light to me, if it is not to you, I do not know what is) and thank goodness for that miraculous 5 Axis Image Stabilization, I can nail this shot hand-held. 

It was not a very good shot of the cat. You can see that the cat was afraid. Afraid of me chasing him into that narrow gap. But hey, sometimes, even negative emotions can produce a different outcome in a photograph. I know usually show happy and bright images. Sometimes, I do things differently. 

Some people say that what is the point of shooting such an image when you know you can't print it large. Well, I don't print it large. When I shot this cat I did not intend to print it all. In fact, I knew the image will suffer loss of detail and will not be good being viewed at 100% (believe me you don't want to). However, I also know that I will be showing it just for blogging purpose, and being reduced in size, it will be perfectly fine. Aren't we consuming images being viewed on webpages most of the time? Facebook, Websites, Flickr, 500px pages, and the likes?

I acknowledge everyone has different levels and standards of what is "usable" in terms of high ISO noise tolerance. To me? That cat is perfectly acceptable. 

If you are in Malaysia and if you have time to spare this Saturday (21 June 2014), please join me for super fun photography outings. In the morning we have KL Bird Park outing, a place I have visited a few times for my previous gear review purposes. In the evening, we will have night street photography outing, capturing KL night scene. 

Both events are free, but open to Olympus users only!

I went to Chow Kit again this morning, with a group of wonderful friends. I decided to just keep things as simple as possible, and not think too much. My constant belief is that simplicity works. 

All images were taken with Olympus OM-D E-M5 with M.Zuiko 45mm F1.8 lens, and PEN E-PL5 with 9mm F8 Fisheye Bodycap lens. 

Malaysia is a land of awesome food. If I were to start shooting and documenting local food in Malaysia, it might probably take years to finish. One of the popular food, as well as my personal favourite, has always been the curry puff (locals call it Karipap). Basically it is sort of like a pastry with curry fillings. The fillings can vary from just vegetables (potatoes, etc), or mix of vegetables and meat (chicken), cooked in curry. 

So I decided to stop by a road side curry puff stall, and started shooting away.